From Our Own Correspondent

How the world really works. These despatches come from: Egypt, where a former military intelligence officer is now firmly in control of the presidency and awaits the election of the kind of parliament from which seldom is heard a discouraging word; China - its president is about to pay a state visit to Britain. At home, his press relations staff are working hard to ensure foreign journalists toe the party line; South Sudan - can a city vanish? Yes it can, according to our correspondent who's just been to Malakal, once the country's lively second city; Australia – it can be fifty degrees centigrade in the Simpson Desert, a landscape virtually untouched by human hand. So why would anyone choose to go there, accompanied by a camel? And Afghanistan – a story about the sound of music, and of hope, amid the din of Kabul.